7 Reasons Why I Miss Halloween

When I moved from the US to New Zealand, I left a lot of holidays behind. We don’t have Thanksgiving Day or celebrate the 4th of July. I’m fine with that. But I do miss Halloween. A lot. Here are seven reasons why.

Halloween Spirit

“But you still have the 31st of October, you can still do it!”, you say. Well, there are a few problems with that idea. The biggest obstacle is that Kiwis DO NOT GET Halloween. Not even a little. If I had a nickel for every time in the past 10 years I’ve heard someone say, “I will not let my child beg for candy door-to-door”, I’d definitely have enough to buy myself a Venti Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks.

The local tendency is to think trick-or-treating is all there is to Halloween which is no better than begging on the streets. The subtlety that escapes Kiwis who have only experienced Halloween via American TV sitcoms is that there is a social contract involved in trick-or-treating. The first part of the contract is dressing up. If you don’t dress up, don’t come banging on my door. My payoff for handing out candy is seeing interesting costumes and excited kids. The second part of the contract is there is an undefined age limit. Once you get “THIS HIGH”, if you show up at my door, you’d better be escorting smaller kids and you shouldn’t expect to get any candy. Otherwise, you look super duper lame.

My experience of “trick-or-treaters” in New Zealand is that angry looking teenagers who are too old to be trick-or-treating show up holding grocery bags expecting for them to be filled with candy. They may or may not say “Trick or treat”. They might possibly be escorting smaller kids, but none of them show up in costume. The social contract is broken on all counts and I understand why Kiwis don’t want hordes of scowling teenagers in street clothes demanding food at their door. That is not the way it SHOULD be, but it is what happens. Which might be why the very mention of Halloween turns many Kiwis into great big grumps.

A New You

Halloween is the one day a year it is socially acceptable to be someone else. You can dress up as Darth Vader or Flutter Shy the My Little Pony. You can get a cheap mask or spend hundreds of hours on your costume, but either way, you get to choose a new you. This applies to kids AND adults. The best parties I went to in the US were Halloween parties. Something magical can happen when people put away their everyday personae and let loose.

Creativity and Individuality

Halloween rewards creativity and individuality. Sure, you can grab a cheap mask, bung it on and go out, but the people who really shine are those who put thought and work into their costumes. These may not be the same people who are the centre of attention at most parties. In fact, the ones who will spend a zillion hours perfecting their Bilbo Baggins look or create a Han Solo Cup costume (google it, you will laugh) may well be the ones who are usually at the periphery. Halloween, in short, is a holiday made for geeks like me.

Autumnal Angst

I miss Halloween in the autumn. It is spring here and the idea of the full Halloween/harvest festival vibe doesn’t work too well when the whole world is springing to life around you. My brain wants to sip apple cider and bob for new season apples, it doesn’t want spring flowers and asparagus for Halloween. (Note I don’t feel that way about a summer Christmas. Give me beach and barbie over snow bells and roasting chestnuts ANY day.)

Pumpkins!

Which brings me to pumpkins. I miss pumpkins. Don’t get me wrong, pumpkins are very popular in New Zealand, but they are popular as a vegetable. If you want pumpkin soup, roast pumpkin or pumpkin ravioli, NZ is a great place to be. If you want pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread or any of the hundreds of other pumpkin-based treats you will find in the US, forget it. The idea of eating pumpkin pie makes as much sense to people down here as it would to you if I suggested we make a sweet green bean pie.

Sure, I can and occasionally do bake my own pumpkin-y treats, but unless I grow my own pie pumpkins, even those don’t taste right. The pumpkins I can buy at the store are don’t have the sweet, rich taste I’m looking for.

Next up, jack o’lanterns. No way to make ’em. The varieties of pumpkin grown commonly in NZ are almost solid. Sure I could grow my own jack o’lantern friendly pumpkin, but it would ripen in OUR autumn, six months from now. Then I’d have to keep it for six months if I want to use it at Halloween. Not happening.

I wish I had a hollow pumpkin to jack.

The Dark Side

Halloween acknowledges the dark side. Death, decay and fear. There is reason that vampires and zombies are so popular both at Halloween and these days year round. They let us explore a darker side of ourselves. To be honest, I’ve had a blast turning my old photos into zombie, vampire and witchy looking creations on PicMonkey all month. So much fun! Here’s my favorite.

Zombie me with a zombie possum on my head. Time well spent!

Sugar Skulls

Last but not least, I miss sugar skulls. Technically they belong to the Day of the Dead on November 1st and not Halloween itself, but close enough. These traditional Mexican icons represent the sweetness of life and the sadness of death rolled into one. Looking at them, it is always the sweetness and vibrance of life that seems foremost to me.

As a North American (Ohio) American family in our first year in NZ, I am feeling sentimental for Halloween. For me the best part is meeting my neighbors further down the street. I meet the people next door and the door after that on a regular basis, but never get to meet everyone on the street, except at Halloween! Thinking about Halloween reminds me of a package that I was not aware I was missing. I miss the smells of autumn and hoping for a warm night for T or T and the dappled light of fall. Costumes and pumpkins. Yup. Thanks for the article!

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When I was little, times were safe enough that older children (say 10 and above) could roam the neighborhoods within a mile or two of my home (and maybe I’ve forgotten that a parent accompanied us). We knew all the best houses to visit. Daisy, who lived up the street from me, dressed up like a witch and handed out homemade candy apples. Another home a bit further away served corn dogs. Parents enjoyed the decorating and preparations as much as the children. Do they have pumpkin spiced lattes at N.Z. Starbucks? I guess that’s better than nothing. Do New Zelanders have any type of fall celebrations in April or May?Donna Hull recently posted..Saturday&#8217;s scene: Standing in the Fireweed

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Lisa
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October 11, 2013

I am a Canadian in NZ for almost 10 years now and totally agree about the pumpkin pie and jack o’lanterns. Have gotten my kids into dressing up and agree that if you don’t have a costume you don’t deserve treats!

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I love Halloween, I always have. I have just as fond memories of Halloween as I do of Christmas. My mom liked both, but I think Halloween was special because it was kind of a start to the whole fall season and Christmas, her favorite holiday, was not far behind. We even had a traditional first pot of chili for the season on Halloween. We moved to very rural Arkansas 6 years ago and I do miss having trick or treaters, so I feel your pain. I still do decorate and do the chili, if only for us.

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I have such fond memories of Halloween, from when I was younger, and when my two older kids were young. At our old house, our street had houses which were quite far apart, so we had few trick-or-treaters (efficiency is the name of the game!). Now we’re in a condo right in the downtown core, and trick-or-treating is done by going lobby to lobby! Just not the same.Belle Wong recently posted..Productivity, Here I Come: Starting a Bullet Journal!

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Since 2001, we’ve lived in a rural area where kids don’t trick-or-treat because the houses are so far apart, the driveways / private roads are long, etc. I really miss seeing the little kids and giving out the candy. Our local grange hosts a Halloween party, but since we don’t have kids, it would be strange to go. I am a bit cranky about the surly teenagers with no costumes and pillow cases as candy bags, but the really little kids? OMG, they slay me. We don’t do costumes or have adult parties or anything (though many of our friends / family do), but we do carve pumpkins and have a small celebration.

I hadn’t thought about how the different seasons would mess up your plans. I’m sorry you cannot find a proper pumpkin.Roxanne recently posted..Canine Heart-Related Heartache

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Ginny
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October 11, 2013

when I first moved to Maryland I lived in a poorer town house comminty on the southeastern side of Baltimore. I hated it 80% of the time. The best 20% of living there? Halloween and Christmas. EVERYONE decorated and there were so many kids out to trick or treat that you simply sat on your front porch because you couldn’t leave the door anyway. It was so much fun! sure, we had the kids that were too old dressed as nothing, but they got a small river pebble with “CANDY” written on it (it is trick OR treat after all!)
Living up on a farm I haven’t seen trick or treaters in 8 years… this year we are having a party for some family on the weekend before, and I love foxes so much that my boyfriend joked I should be a fox and he should be the hunt master in the red coat. And so we are 🙂 I found a suit coat at goodwill for $10.00 and got a bottle of dye (going to have to add some more red to the coat I think…) and yellow ribbon for the collar, and a gal is making me a set of ears and a tail. I’m really excited! I don’t often do much for halloween, but its fun to do when I have the opportunity. What a bummer that they don’t celebrate in NZ! I’ll have to put out a little kiwi decoration for you 🙂

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Don’t move back to the U.S. thinking it will be very different–other than the commercial aspect–whole enormous pop-up stores for a couple of months selling whatever. But very few people really do a lot of decorating, many parents are afraid to let their children go door-to-door, the teens with grocery sacks are definitely among us. The big things now are all commercial–orange flower bouquets and pumpkin patches on corners that will morph into Christmas tree lots; racks of cheap, tacky TV-character costumes for kids; the afore mentioned mega pop-up stores; Hallmark cards; and espeically Haunted House experiences, which rival Broadway musicals.
On the other hand, I live in the Southwestern U.S. where The Day of the Dead is ironically alive and well.

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Jane
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October 10, 2013

I love Halloween and I’m Australian. I treat it as a celtic tradition. I really love vintage-style orange and black artwork, so I decorate the house as tastefully as possible, with a smidgeon of fun! I make pumpkin pie and witches brew and have been known to cook squid ink pasta with a tomato sauce for Halloween dinner! We can get proper carving Halloween pumpkins in Australia (I think they are grown in Queensland) and we always have fun with them too! One special year my Scottish mother-in-law came dressed up carrying carved turnips, because that’s what they did at home. I agree that it is very creative, especially for children – much more so than Easter or Christmas. I think I will always celebrate Halloween!

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I can certainly sympathize. I missed Halloween when I moved to France. Especially for my kids. When I returned 25 years later, I was surprised to see the level of celebration here in the USA for adults, as well as kids. Today I was at a clothing swap. One woman picked up a funky top with fringe and declared, “I know. I’ll dress up as a poodle for Halloween.”